I was poking around in the League Manager options for my large keeper league yesterday and noticed that ESPN has introduced Blind Bidding for free agents in addition to the standard waiver system. I was wondering if anyone knows anything about how this functions? I emailed their Customer Care, and their response was:

Thank you for contacting us.
I apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately we do not have this feature. However, I will forward your feedback to the appropriate department for review.

So...
It looked pretty basic, it had check boxes for the day(s) for the bids to process and a dropdown box to select the time of day they process, and a place to input the budget for the teams for the season.
My main question to them was (1) can the bidding period span over the course of several days, since not everyone in the league can for sure get on and make a bid on one specific day and (2) after the bidding period(s) for the week, do all remaining free agents just become available for pick-up any time before their next game starts? If there is only one bidding period and say you need to pick up a CB to cover a bye week, and you get out bid on the CBs you wanted, are you just SOL (stuck on a lake?) for that week or can one be pulled off the heap of players no one wanted before game time.
Here's actually the e-mail I sent them about the feature that doesn't exist:

I was wondering if I could get some clarification on how the new Free Agent Auction feature works. Can one period be set up to last several consecutive days before the bids process (giving players several days to make their bids)?
After the bids process, and before the remaining Free Agent players start their games, are they simple left as Free Agents available for anyone to pick up at anytime (Similar to after Waivers have cleared for the week when that setting is chosen)?

Oue league uses this for Yahoo so I'll explain it my best from that direction. The days you check will be the days all free agents will be placed on waivers. During this time managers can bid from the budget that you set for them. No one knows what the other person has bid and the highest bid for that player will recive that player on the final day of waivers for that week. So yes the bidding time can be multiple days. You will commonly see Sunday-Tuesday waivers so all the games can be played for that week and no one can add players while games are being played. After the bidding period all players become free agents again until the next waiver period that you set in place. For example I place a bid for Hester on Tuesday of $5 and I want to drop Holt. The next day I find out another player had bid $20 so he gets Hester. Once you run out of your vudget you have to wait until everyone else has had thier pick of the pool during the waiver period you set. Hope this helps!

I was poking around in the League Manager options for my large keeper league yesterday and noticed that ESPN has introduced Blind Bidding for free agents in addition to the standard waiver system. I was wondering if anyone knows anything about how this functions? I emailed their Customer Care, and their response was:

Thank you for contacting us.
I apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately we do not have this feature. However, I will forward your feedback to the appropriate department for review.

So...
It looked pretty basic, it had check boxes for the day(s) for the bids to process and a dropdown box to select the time of day they process, and a place to input the budget for the teams for the season.
My main question to them was (1) can the bidding period span over the course of several days, since not everyone in the league can for sure get on and make a bid on one specific day and (2) after the bidding period(s) for the week, do all remaining free agents just become available for pick-up any time before their next game starts? If there is only one bidding period and say you need to pick up a CB to cover a bye week, and you get out bid on the CBs you wanted, are you just SOL (stuck on a lake?) for that week or can one be pulled off the heap of players no one wanted before game time.
Here's actually the e-mail I sent them about the feature that doesn't exist:

I was wondering if I could get some clarification on how the new Free Agent Auction feature works. Can one period be set up to last several consecutive days before the bids process (giving players several days to make their bids)?
After the bids process, and before the remaining Free Agent players start their games, are they simple left as Free Agents available for anyone to pick up at anytime (Similar to after Waivers have cleared for the week when that setting is chosen)?

Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Daniel

Pretty sure they are using a version of free agent bidding similar to everyone else
You should have options which day to have the site run the bids and how much each team has for FAAB (free agent acquisition budget)
Likely you also have to option to run FCFS (first come first serve waivers) After the bids are processed but I would vote against that option and suggest you just have one FAAB period per week with no roster changes after that (like the FBG Players Championship will and the FFPC, WCOFF and NFFC all do).

Pretty sure they are using a version of free agent bidding similar to everyone else
You should have options which day to have the site run the bids and how much each team has for FAAB (free agent acquisition budget)
Likely you also have to option to run FCFS (first come first serve waivers) After the bids are processed but I would vote against that option and suggest you just have one FAAB period per week with no roster changes after that (like the FBG Players Championship will and the FFPC, WCOFF and NFFC all do).

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.
Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).
ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

I'm having trouble finding detailed info on Yahoo's FAAB feature. I'm introducing it to our league this year, and everyone is going to need some education on it, and why it's a good deal. I'm trying to find screenshots, too.

I emailed ESPN help on this one, but got back an answer nowhere near the question I asked. I'm going to use the ESPN default schedule for bid processing (every day but tuesday), but was curious about the processing that would be done on Monday afternoon before the Monday night game. Will the players that played on Sunday be available for bidding or will it only be players that have not played that week yet. Reason being, if say a starting RB goes down sunday afternoon, everyone is going to want to bid on the backup RB. I'd rather have the Weds bidding session be the one that determines that so everyone has a chance to get their bid in. However, i would also like to keep a monday bid processing open so that if a person needs to change out a player involving the two teams that haven't played for that week, they can.
Basically, will the players be on some sort of waiver after they play, where they can't be bid on until the new "week" of the NFL starts.

Pretty sure they are using a version of free agent bidding similar to everyone else
You should have options which day to have the site run the bids and how much each team has for FAAB (free agent acquisition budget)
Likely you also have to option to run FCFS (first come first serve waivers) After the bids are processed but I would vote against that option and suggest you just have one FAAB period per week with no roster changes after that (like the FBG Players Championship will and the FFPC, WCOFF and NFFC all do).

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.

Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).

ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

Having this issue as well (I'm not the commish but trying to figure out how he needs to set it for the league).

What I want is exactly what you do: have players be placed on waivers as soon as their game starts on Sunday, to remain on waivers until a certain time period (lets use your example of Wednesday at 11pm) during which owners will make their blind bids. After 11 on Wed, all bids are processed, those who are claimed are distributed to the new owners and their budget is reduced. THEN I want all other players to be Free Agents from that point on until their respective game time on Sunday.

At this point do we still not have a clue as to whether A or B in your bolded sentence would take place? That's a major issue IMO. I believe there is a workaround...set it to run twice, once on Wednesday at 11pm and then again on Sunday at 11am (for example), with the minimum bid set to 0 (so in essence its a free agent pickup). The problem with this is still that it won't be instantaneous, and an owner will have to submit his claim, wait for it to run, get back on the computer to make the roster change, etc. It makes last minute lineup swaps fairly difficult in the event of a late breaking injury.

Pretty sure they are using a version of free agent bidding similar to everyone else
You should have options which day to have the site run the bids and how much each team has for FAAB (free agent acquisition budget)
Likely you also have to option to run FCFS (first come first serve waivers) After the bids are processed but I would vote against that option and suggest you just have one FAAB period per week with no roster changes after that (like the FBG Players Championship will and the FFPC, WCOFF and NFFC all do).

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.

Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).

ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

Having this issue as well (I'm not the commish but trying to figure out how he needs to set it for the league).

What I want is exactly what you do: have players be placed on waivers as soon as their game starts on Sunday, to remain on waivers until a certain time period (lets use your example of Wednesday at 11pm) during which owners will make their blind bids. After 11 on Wed, all bids are processed, those who are claimed are distributed to the new owners and their budget is reduced. THEN I want all other players to be Free Agents from that point on until their respective game time on Sunday.

At this point do we still not have a clue as to whether A or B in your bolded sentence would take place? That's a major issue IMO. I believe there is a workaround...set it to run twice, once on Wednesday at 11pm and then again on Sunday at 11am (for example), with the minimum bid set to 0 (so in essence its a free agent pickup). The problem with this is still that it won't be instantaneous, and an owner will have to submit his claim, wait for it to run, get back on the computer to make the roster change, etc. It makes last minute lineup swaps fairly difficult in the event of a late breaking injury.

Thoughts?

Well I think we're SOL (stuck on a lake?) when it comes to Free Agents available for free pickup. I emailed ESPN and they told me when using the bidding there are never any free agents.
I still want to know if a player plays Sunday is he available for bidding on the Monday 11AM bid processing or does he have to wait until the NFL advances a "week" (the Monday night game gets played) before he is eligible for bidding. Hoping to make Wednesday the big day for bidding on the players (IE the main running back went down and everyone wants to pickup his backup), but still have Monday available in case a person needs to get a different player for the Monday night game (from the pool of players who have yet to play).

That's exactly what I did. Spoke to a CSR named Brian who told me once your last waiver run is processed, all remaining players become Free Agents and can be picked up at no cost.
So I recommend calling for your Monday night question.

That's exactly what I did. Spoke to a CSR named Brian who told me once your last waiver run is processed, all remaining players become Free Agents and can be picked up at no cost.

So I recommend calling for your Monday night question.

That is not true and the reason I chose to run my league on yahoo instead of ESPN. With ESPN, the ONLY way to pick up free agents is through bidding. They have an option to run the bidding nearly every day but you must bid. No FCFS option with FAAB.

This article is for baseball, but football FAAB works the same way. Commish can set bids to allow $0 bids to pick up players for nothing.

Pretty sure they are using a version of free agent bidding similar to everyone else
You should have options which day to have the site run the bids and how much each team has for FAAB (free agent acquisition budget)
Likely you also have to option to run FCFS (first come first serve waivers) After the bids are processed but I would vote against that option and suggest you just have one FAAB period per week with no roster changes after that (like the FBG Players Championship will and the FFPC, WCOFF and NFFC all do).

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.

Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).

ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

Having this issue as well (I'm not the commish but trying to figure out how he needs to set it for the league).

What I want is exactly what you do: have players be placed on waivers as soon as their game starts on Sunday, to remain on waivers until a certain time period (lets use your example of Wednesday at 11pm) during which owners will make their blind bids. After 11 on Wed, all bids are processed, those who are claimed are distributed to the new owners and their budget is reduced. THEN I want all other players to be Free Agents from that point on until their respective game time on Sunday.

At this point do we still not have a clue as to whether A or B in your bolded sentence would take place? That's a major issue IMO. I believe there is a workaround...set it to run twice, once on Wednesday at 11pm and then again on Sunday at 11am (for example), with the minimum bid set to 0 (so in essence its a free agent pickup). The problem with this is still that it won't be instantaneous, and an owner will have to submit his claim, wait for it to run, get back on the computer to make the roster change, etc. It makes last minute lineup swaps fairly difficult in the event of a late breaking injury.

Thoughts?

Well I think we're SOL (stuck on a lake?) when it comes to Free Agents available for free pickup. I emailed ESPN and they told me when using the bidding there are never any free agents.
I still want to know if a player plays Sunday is he available for bidding on the Monday 11AM bid processing or does he have to wait until the NFL advances a "week" (the Monday night game gets played) before he is eligible for bidding. Hoping to make Wednesday the big day for bidding on the players (IE the main running back went down and everyone wants to pickup his backup), but still have Monday available in case a person needs to get a different player for the Monday night game (from the pool of players who have yet to play).

I personally don't play on ESPN any longer due to Customer Service issues (not getting answers to the question asked). I can only reference the site I play on http://www.fantrax.c...f...0&ref=10033 When using Free Agent Bidding, they allow you to select the days you want the bidding to run (no different than other platforms). What do do allow if the Commish requests, is to make the bidding system open, meaning he would be able to select an option of displaying the team that has the highest pending bid for a player, or displaying what the highest bid $ is on a player. I like those options versus the blind bidding where you have no idea how much you need to put up to get a player, or if you're bidding against yourself. When using a bidding system, I don't believe any site offers bidding on waivered players only, and an open free agent system thereafter. If ESPN allows full commish controls during the season, your commish can try manually switching the setting every week from bidding to an open free agent system. I did this one year when I played on EA Sports, but it was a hassle as I had to be available to make the changes manually.

That's exactly what I did. Spoke to a CSR named Brian who told me once your last waiver run is processed, all remaining players become Free Agents and can be picked up at no cost.

So I recommend calling for your Monday night question.

That is not true and the reason I chose to run my league on yahoo instead of ESPN. With ESPN, the ONLY way to pick up free agents is through bidding. They have an option to run the bidding nearly every day but you must bid. No FCFS option with FAAB.

This article is for baseball, but football FAAB works the same way. Commish can set bids to allow $0 bids to pick up players for nothing.

This is a pretty good explanation with example I found for ESPN. Unfortunately, it doesn't answer the question above about Sunday players being locked for Monday pickups or not.
EXAMPLE ONLY:
Free Agent Acquisition Budget"(FAAB) Waiver System - This is a blind auction for free agents open to every team within the league which enables any owner a chance to pick up any free agent.
Owners will have a budget of $100 with which they can make player acquisitions during the season.
Free agent bids will process on each Mon-Wed-Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun at noon CST and the owner with the highest amount bided will be awarded the player, the bid will be subtracted from that owner's budget, and a transaction will be deducted. At that point the next waiver period begins and bidding commences until the following day at noon. For example, free agent bidding will commence as soon as NFL week 1 Sunday games concludes. Owners may bid on any available player up until the next waiver time - Monday, 9/13 at noon at which time the bids will be processed with players awarded to the highest bidders. At this point free agent bidding opens once again and then those bids are processed on Wednesday, 9/15 noon CST. This process continues for Thur, Sat, Sun and carries on throughout the season.
The only way an owner can pick up a free agent is by winning them with the highest bid. There are no first-come, first-serve pickups after the bidding process
The minimum bid an owner can make on a free agent is $0. This means an owner can bid $0 on a player and win if no one else bids on that player. This will enable an owner to still pick up players if they blow their budget.
During the waiver period, no owner can see any other team's bids or bid amounts.
In the event of bids of equal amounts for a player by two teams (a tie), waiver order priority (inverse order of the standings for that week) determines the winner of the player
Owners should consider prioritizing multiple players to bid on for each single player they wish to drop. So if you really need to pick up a waiver player for that week you should plan on bidding on other players unless you put in a bid you know will win. For example:
Owner1 selects Kyle Orton to drop from his roster
Owner1 selects waiver player Tim Tebow to bid on for $7
Owner1 selects waiver player Brady Quinn to bid on for $5 in the event he doesn't have the highest bid on Tebow
Owner1 selects waiver player Matt Prater to bid on for $4 in the event he doesn't have the highest bid on Quinn
The bid patch process runs on Weds at 10am
Owner3 wins Tebow with the high bid of $10
Owner9 wins Quinn with the high bid of $8
Owner1 wins Prater with the high bid of $4

For the Monday issue, I think it might work if bidding on and dropping players who haven't played yet that week (ie are playing Monday night or are on a bye). I don't think you could drop someone who just played on Sunday for a player to use on Monday. Once they play, they are locked onto your roster for that week (until Tuesday morning).
I think this could work because I know we still have auctions on Saturdays after Thursday night games. That's the same as getting Monday players after the Sunday games have started.
I'm not totally sure though. I've never tried to have Monday auctions.

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.
Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).
ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

I am using ESPN for a new league this year and am using FAAB for the first time. Could someone please answer if ESPN allows for FA pickups after all the blind bids have finished for the week? Or if you can ONLY pick up new players via blind bidding.
I am hoping for the A option mentioned above, to be able to pick up FAs after the blind bidding has processed on Wednesday for example. If ESPN does not allow this is there a host site that you would recommend using that has this function?
Thanks!

Ah so your saying if I were to tick the Wednesday box and set the time to say 11PM-EST then players would be on waiver and available for bidding from the time their game the previous week starts until 11PM-EST on Weds. Then as you said all players will either (A) become Free Agents available for pick up without bidding (FCFS) or (B) lock until their next game, after which they'll be eligible for bidding. ESPN just neglects to mention what the case is, and there is no option to set it.
Taking that a step farther, if I wanted to have a second bidding period I could also tick the Saturday Box and the remaining players would again be available for bidding and process at 11PM-EST on Saturday (The only issue with this, is how do the thursday and Saturday night games affect things).
ESPN has about two sentences in their documentation just basically explaining what blind bidding is, but doesn't tell any of the particulars.

I am using ESPN for a new league this year and am using FAAB for the first time. Could someone please answer if ESPN allows for FA pickups after all the blind bids have finished for the week? Or if you can ONLY pick up new players via blind bidding.
I am hoping for the A option mentioned above, to be able to pick up FAs after the blind bidding has processed on Wednesday for example. If ESPN does not allow this is there a host site that you would recommend using that has this function?
Thanks!

I wondered that as well. Started our league up and you can only make wavier moves via FAAB. I wish you could however pick up players after the wavier wire process.

Here's how you set it up. LM tools, change settings, keepers and transactions.
Check the boxes for Wednesday through Saturday (Sunday if you want to l)
Enter how much FAAB you wanna give
Set the minimum to $0
This makes every day first come first serve if noone else bids on a guy. In the event of a tie (even $0) it goes reverse standings reset weekly

Here's how you set it up. LM tools, change settings, keepers and transactions.

Check the boxes for Wednesday through Saturday (Sunday if you want to l)

Enter how much FAAB you wanna give

Set the minimum to $0

This makes every day first come first serve if noone else bids on a guy. In the event of a tie (even $0) it goes reverse standings reset weekly

That is how I have the league set up right now, and that is not first come first serve. If I were to bid on a guy for $0 and someone else bid on that same player for $0 12 hours later the person with the worse record would be awarded that player. If this is how ESPN must be run it is not process I was hoping for. I was hoping that after the last day of blind bidding that the rest of the free agents would able to be picked up on a first come - first serve basis, without bids. I have found that this is possible on Yahoo for example.

Here's how you set it up. LM tools, change settings, keepers and transactions.

Check the boxes for Wednesday through Saturday (Sunday if you want to l)

Enter how much FAAB you wanna give

Set the minimum to $0

This makes every day first come first serve if noone else bids on a guy. In the event of a tie (even $0) it goes reverse standings reset weekly

That is how I have the league set up right now, and that is not first come first serve. If I were to bid on a guy for $0 and someone else bid on that same player for $0 12 hours later the person with the worse record would be awarded that player. If this is how ESPN must be run it is not process I was hoping for. I was hoping that after the last day of blind bidding that the rest of the free agents would able to be picked up on a first come - first serve basis, without bids. I have found that this is possible on Yahoo for example.

Bump. Is it still the case that if you use blind bidding everything has to run through waivers? We are considering this in one of my leagues. However, if waivers only run once a day at say 12pm and there is a night game for example, it sounds like you basically will not have the ability to make last minute add/drops. Is this the case?

Bump. Is it still the case that if you use blind bidding everything has to run through waivers? We are considering this in one of my leagues. However, if waivers only run once a day at say 12pm and there is a night game for example, it sounds like you basically will not have the ability to make last minute add/drops. Is this the case?

Bump. Is it still the case that if you use blind bidding everything has to run through waivers? We are considering this in one of my leagues. However, if waivers only run once a day at say 12pm and there is a night game for example, it sounds like you basically will not have the ability to make last minute add/drops. Is this the case?

I'm pretty sure nothing has changed with this.

the lack of flexaiblity with FAAB is frustrating.... how hard is it to program the site to use FAAB instead of waivers.... while allowing players who clear waivers each week to be picked up at any time first come first serve?? All we want is instead of waiver claims change it to FAAB for waivers...